An individual on a phone call may be placed on hold in a number of scenarios. One common scenario includes placing a call to a customer service operator. Another includes calling into an audio conference. And yet another includes waiting for the other party who is on a second line (i.e., call waiting). Even within a single phone call, the caller may be placed on hold numerous times. For example, when a customer (i.e., the caller) phones a construction company, the customer may be placed on hold to listen to an introductory message about the company, its location, and its hours. The customer may remain on hold until a receptionist is available to take the call. After speaking with the receptionist, the customer may be placed back on hold while the receptionist locates the particular individual who the customer wishes to speak.
In some scenarios, such as call waiting, the line is typically silent when on hold. In business scenarios, however, the silence is often filled with audio, which serves the dual purpose of entertaining the on-hold caller and providing an indication that the call is still connected. In some instances, the audio may be in the form of music, often referred to as “music on hold”. It other instances, it may be in the form of a spoken message, often referred to as “message on hold” or “on-hold messaging”. On-hold messaging is used to convey information, such as information about the callee, to the on-hold caller.
Conveying information by on-hold messaging is appealing because the caller is a captive audience who will generally remain on the call until taken off hold. As such, callees often use this opportunity to communicate with the caller. Many businesses provide voice talent for creating messages for those companies who would like to leverage on-hold messaging. Companies, to provide information about the company, often create these messages. For example, the on-hold message for a dentist's office may provide the location and hours of operation of the office. The message may also extol the virtues of the office and the quality of the dentists and staff. For other types of businesses, these messages can be used to educate, inform, and entertain callers about the products and services offered by the business as well as pitch new products and services. For example, when a customer calls the customer services department of his internet service provider, an on-hold message may inform him that the provider now offers new high speed data connection options.
Traditional on-hold messages contain information focused on the business itself (i.e., the “callee”). To the extent that the on-hold message includes an advertisement, the advertisement is typically centered on, or related to, the callee or its partner businesses. The effectiveness of on-hold messages, however, could be increased by focusing the message to the caller instead of the callee.
Current traditional telephones systems are capable of identifying the phone number of the caller and, in most instances, the caller's identity. In addition, additional information relating to a phone number or to the caller is electronically available via public and private internet-provided services, such as reverse number lookup, area code mapping, location based services, social networking sites, and the like.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the state of the art to provide a system and method for effectively delivering advertisements and/or informational messages targeted to the individual caller based on information derived from the call in combination with other sources related to the caller.
The approaches described in this section are those that could, but have not yet necessarily, been conceived or pursued. Accordingly, inclusion in this section should not be viewed as an indication that the approach described is prior art unless otherwise indicated.